Greetings, Dragon Nation! Once again, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to share a few thoughts with you. It has been a great school year so far!

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I wanted to offer a sincere thanks to all of you for taking my last message on the honor code seriously. We have seen a distinct drop in administrative referrals for honor violations, and that shows that as a school community, we value the culture of trust that we have worked so hard to achieve.     

While I sit here in my office composing this message, I am looking at leaves falling from the trees outside as a late fall wind blows them to the ground. One of the things that I love about Virginia is that we really do get four distinct seasons. Similar to the world around us, operating a school such as ours has seasons. We work within a cycle of reflection, collaboration, creation, implementation, achievement, and then back to reflection. The cycle starts in June as we launch a senior class out into the world. This leads to reflection on what we could do to improve our community, collaboration with stakeholders, creation of new courses, programs, and policies, installation of the new ideas followed by watching to see if they achieved what we had hoped for.  Then it starts all over again with incoming freshmen!

I wanted to share with you a few of the things that are in the works now to improve our learning community. First, we are looking for ways to add money into the school’s budget to hire a part-time Coordinator of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This person would work to help our school continue its journey toward creating an inclusive and welcoming environment.  

On the more technical side, we are working to evaluate the course weighting system and how some of our rigorous teacher-created curriculum should be counted towards a student’s GPA.  The UNIV classes will be re-designated to identifiers that are recognized by colleges and fit better into the common application.  

Discussions are happening to reshape how we recruit our students and how we can better reach out to students at a younger age to share the opportunities that are available to them at MLWGS.  Along with this, we are looking at our overall “Freshman Experience,” including how we conduct orientations, how we engage our new Dragons, and what they should learn in the FIRC classes.  

As you can see, we don’t just sit on our laurels! Like the seasons, we are constantly changing and evolving. To continue to be one of the best schools in the country, we must be self-reflective and willing to have tough conversations to move forward.  

Thanks again to The Jabberwock for giving me this gift of another forum to stay connected with you. Until next time, stay safe, stay strong, and go Dragons!